OF R. WEST. 127
determined to scrape a little, and accordingly liave
sent yon, in lieu of your vaudeville, a miserable
elegy1.

* IMITATED FBOM PKOPEBTIUS El: 15: Lib. 3:
Nunc, oh Bacche tuis <fec.

Now prostrate Bacchus at thy Shrine I bend:
This once be graciotis Father and attend!
Thine great Iryaeus is the power eonfest
To chase our sorrows, & restore our rest:
'Tis thine, each joy attendant on the bowl,
Thine each gay Lenitive that glads the Soul.
God of the rosey cheek, <fo laughing eye,
To thee from Cynthia and from love I fly:
If ever Ariadne was thy Care,
Now shew thy pity, <fe accept my prayer.

Then, Bacchus, if by thee renew'd I find,
As once, my old serenity of mind,
My Umbrian hill shall flourish with the vine
Thine Bacchus, all my labours shall be thine
With my own hands the generous growth I'll rear,
Bank the young shoots, Sc watch the riseing year,
Till all my boughs with the red Autumn bend,
And the large Vintage in my Vats descend.

Hail, mighty Bacchus, to my latest hour
In grateful strains 111 celebrate thy power;
And as I strike the Dithyrambic string,
Thy name, thy glory, & thy power I'll sing:
Thy birth I'll sing, thy mother's fatal fires,
Thy Indian trophies, & Nysaean choirs:

1 This elegy does not appear. [Berry,] I think it must be
the Imitation of Propertius which I find in Gray's Common
Place Books at Pembroke with date of this month and year.